Institute of Artificial Intelligence

Prof. Dr. Birte Glimm

Since July 2011 I work at the University of Ulm within the Institute of Artificial Intelligence. Until June 2017  as a junior professor and since then as full professor. In 2019 our project "Do it yourself, but not alone: Companion-Technology for Home Improvement" was awarded a price for cooperations between science and industry (Kooperationspreis Wissenschaft-Wirtschaft). In 2017 I received a Google Faculty Research Award and I was honoured with the Mileva Einstein-Marić-Prize. 

Before coming to Ulm, I was a research assistant in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, where I worked in the Information Systems Group, mainly on developing algorithms for automated reasoning in expressive Description Logics and on the implementation of the HermiT reasoner.

I did my PhD in Manchester in the Information Management Group under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ian Horrocks and Prof. Dr. Uli Sattler and I was honoured with the Best Thesis Award from the School of Computer Science at Manchester University in 2008. From September 2001 until July 2004 I studied Computer Science in the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and I received my bachelor degree with an award for the best degree.

Before studying Computer Science, I worked for 3.5 years in Industry and did another degree in Communication Design.

Further Information

My scientific interest is mainly in knowledge representation and automatic reasoning. I develop, implement and optimize algorithms for automatic reasoning in expressive description logics and analyze their complexity. For example, I have developed various optimizations for tableau algorithms, novel procedures for combining tableau and saturation-based algorithms and algorithms for answering queries. Our new abstraction and refinement procedure allows conclusions to be drawn about knowledge bases with very large amounts of data. We are also working on providing autonomous vehicles with dynamic knowledge of map data, where a particular challenge lies in the high dynamics. Our research on the generation of explanations in natural language allows the automated derivations to be made comprehensible.

Since 2020 I have been a Research Fellow at fortiss, I am a member of the Steering Committee of the IBM fortiss Center for AI and a co-organizer of the Dagstuhl Perspectives Seminar "Current and Future Challenges in Knowledge Representation and Reasoning" (postponed to July 2022 due to the corona pandemic).

I am an editor of the SPARQL 1.1 Entailment Regimes specification, developed within the SPARQL Working Group of the W3C. Entailment regimes extend SPARQL to work with semantics other than simple entailment, e.g., RDF and RDFS semantics and OWL Direct and RDF-Based Semantics. I am also an editor of the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Conformance specification, which describes the conditions that OWL 2 tools must satisfy in order to be conformant with the language specification.

  • since 2019 Chair of the Exam Board Computer Science (for BSc+Msc Computer Science, BSc+Msc Media Informatics, BSc+Msc Software Engineering, MSc Artificial Intelligence)
  • since 2019 Chair of the Exam Board Cognitive Systems
  • since 2014 Chair of the Admissions Board Cognitive Systems
  • 2018-2021 Member of the Study Commission Cognitive Systems
  • SoSe 2021 Member of the Study Commission Computer Science
  • 2015-2018 Programme Coordination MSc Cognitive Systems

Projects and seminars in the area of Semantic Web and Artificial Intelligence

Lectures

SS 2021: Programming Concepts for Cognitive Systems, Algorithms for Knowledge Representation

SS 2021: Programming Concepts for Cognitive Systems, Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies

WS 2020/2021: Web Engineering

SS 2020: Programming Concepts for Cognitive Systems

WS 2019/2020: Web Engineering, Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies

SS 2019: Programming Concepts for Cognitive Systems

WS 2018/2019: Web Engineering, Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies

SS 2018: Einführung in die Informatik, Programming Concepts for Cognitive Systems

WS 2017/2018: Web Engineering, Programming Concepts for Cognitive Systems

SS 2017: Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies, Einführung in die Informatik

WS 2016/2017: Introduction to Computer Science for Psychologists, Web Engineering

SS 2016: Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies

WS 2015/2016: Introduction to Computer Science for Psychologists

SS 2015: Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies

WS 2013/2014: Einführung in die Informatik, Semantic Web Grundlagen

SS 2013: Algorithmen in der Wissensrepräsentation

WS 2012/2013: Semantic Web Grundlagen

SS 2012: Algorithmen in der Wissensrepräsentation

WS 2011/2012: Semantic Web Grundlagen

2020 Best Paper Award, Haonan Qiu, Adel Ayara and Birte Glimm, International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development
2020 Best Research Track Senior Programme Committee Member, International Semantic Web Conference
2019 Kooperationspreis Wissenschaft-Wirtschaft
2019 Best Reproducibility Award, Andreas Steigmiller and Birte Glimm, International Semantic Web Conference
2019 Best Research Paper Award runner-up, Andreas Steigmiller and Birte Glimm, International Semantic Web Conference
2017 Google Faculty Research Award
2017 Mileva Einstein-Marić-Preis 
2016 Best Resources Paper, B. Parsia, N. Matentzoglu, R. S. Goncalves, B. Glimm and A. Steigmiller, International Semantic Web Conference
2015 OWL Reasoner Evaluation Competition, 6 Tracks (Reasoner Konclude: 4 × 1. and 2 × 2. prize, Reasoner HermiT: 1 × 2. and 4 × 3. prize)
2014 ISWC Best Reviewer Research Track, International Semantic Web Conference
2014 Kurt Gödel medal, 1. FLoC Olympic Games
2014 OWL Reasoner Evaluation Competition, 6 Tracks (Reasoner Konclude: 5 × 1. and 1 × 2. prize, Reasoner HermiT: 1 × 2. and 1 × 3. prize)
2013 OWL Reasoner Evaluation Competition, 9 Tracks (Reasoner Konclude: 3×1., 2×2. and 2 × 3. prize, Reasoner HermiT: 1 × 1., 2 × 2. and 1 × 3. prize)
2011 Best Programme Committee Member Finalist, International Semantic Web Conference
2010 Best Research Paper Nominee, Birte Glimm, Ian Horrocks, Boris Motik and Giorgos Stoilos, International Semantic Web Conference
2008 Steve Furber Medal for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis in Computer Science
09.04–09.07 Doctoral scholarship of the Foundation of German Business
09.04–09.07 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council studentship
2004 Best computer science degree in 2004 at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences
04.02–07.04 Scholarship of the Foundation of German Business

  • Moritz Illich (2021-)
  • Haonan Qiu (submitted 2021, defense pending)
  • Andreas Steigmiller (finished 2016, summa cum laude, dissertation award Thomas Gessmann-Stiftung)
  • Ilianna Kollia (external at the National Technical University of Athens, finished 2014)

Publications

2017

69.
Schiller, Marvin R. G.; Behnke, Gregor; Schmautz, Mario; Bercher, Pascal; Kraus, Matthias; Dorna, Michael; Minker, Wolfgang; Glimm, Birte; Biundo, Susanne
A Paradigm for Coupling Procedural and Conceptual Knowledge in Companion Systems
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Companion Technology (ICCT 2017)
Publisher: IEEE
2017
DOI:10.1109/COMPANION.2017.8287072
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2017/SBSBKDMGB-ICCT2017.pdf
68.
Glimm, Birte; Kazakov, Yevgeny; Tran, Trung-Kien
Scalable Reasoning by Abstraction in DL-Lite
, Proceedings of the 30th International Workshop on Description Logics (DL 2017)Volume1879fromCEUR Workshop Proceedings
Publisher: CEUR-WS.org
2017
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2017/GlKT17b.pdf
67.
Mathieu, Christian; Klusch, Matthias; Glimm, Birte
QSMat: Query-Based Materialization for Efficient RDF Stream Processing
, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web (KESW 2017)Volume786fromCommunications in Computer and Information Science, Page 159-174
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
2017
DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-69548-8_12
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2017/MaKG17a.pdf
66.
Glimm, Birte; Kazakov, Yevgeny; Tran, Trung-Kien
Ontology Materialization by Abstraction Refinement in Horn SHOIF
Proceedings of the 31st AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Page 1114--1120
31st AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
San Francisco, California, USA
February 4-9, 2017
In Satinder P. Singh and Shaul Markovitch, Editor
Publisher: AAAI Press
2017
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2017/GlKT17a.pdf
65.
Ulmschneider, Klaus; Glimm, Birte
Knowledge Graph: Semantic Representation and Assessment of Innovation Ecosystems
In Rozewski, Przemyslaw and Lange, Christoph, Editor, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web (KESW 2017)fromCommunications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS), Page 211--226
In Rozewski, Przemyslaw and Lange, Christoph, Editor
Publisher: Springer, Berlin, Germany
2017
DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-69548-8_15
ISBN:978-3-319-69547-1
File:pdfhttp://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2017/UlGl17a.pdf
64.
Brenner, Markus; Glimm, Birte
Incremental Materialization Update via Abstraction Refinement
, Proceedings of the 30th International Workshop on Description Logics (DL 2017)Volume1879fromCEUR Workshop Proceedings
Publisher: CEUR-WS.org
2017
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2017/GlBr17a.pdf

2016

63.
Parsia, Bijan; Matentzoglu, Nicolas; Goncalves, Rafael S.; Glimm, Birte; Steigmiller, Andreas
The OWL Reasoner Evaluation (ORE) 2015 Resources
In Paul T. Groth and Elena Simperl and Alasdair J. G. Gray and Marta Sabou and Markus Krötzsch and Freddy Lécué and Fabian Flöck and Yolanda Gil, Editor, Proceedings of the 15th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2016)Volume9982fromLecture Notes in Computer Science, Page 159--167
In Paul T. Groth and Elena Simperl and Alasdair J. G. Gray and Marta Sabou and Markus Krötzsch and Freddy Lécué and Fabian Flöck and Yolanda Gil, Editor
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
2016
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2016/PMGG16a.pdf
62.
Glimm, Birte; Stuckenschmidt, Heiner
Special Issue on Semantic Web
KI - Künstliche Intelligenz, 30 (2) :113--115
2016
ISSN: 1610-1987
DOI:10.1007/s13218-016-0430-3
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2016/GlSt2016b.pdf
61.
Ulmschneider, Klaus; Glimm, Birte
Semantic Exploitation of Implicit Patent Information
In Jin, Yaochu and Kollias, Stefanos, Editor, Proceedings of the 7th IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI'16), Page 1-8
In Jin, Yaochu and Kollias, Stefanos, Editor
Publisher: IEEE Computer Society, Red Hook, United States
2016
DOI:10.1109/SSCI.2016.7849943
ISBN:9781509042395
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2016/UlGl16a.pdf
60.
Glimm, Birte; Kazakov, Yevgeny; Tran, Trung-Kien
Ontology Materialization by Abstraction Refinement in Horn SHOIF
, Proceedings of the 29th International Workshop on Description Logics (DL 2016)Volume1577fromCEUR Workshop Proceedings
Publisher: CEUR-WS.org
2016
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2016/GlKT16a.pdf
59.
Glimm, Birte; Kazakov, Yevgeny; Tran, Trung-Kien
Scalable Reasoning by Abstraction Beyond DL-Lite
In Magdalena Ortiz and Stefan Schlobach, Editor, Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web Reasoning and Rule Systems (RR 2016)Volume9898fromLecture Notes in Computer Science, Page 77--93
In Magdalena Ortiz and Stefan Schlobach, Editor
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
2016
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2016/GlKT16b.pdf
58.
Glimm, Birte
Interview with Prof. Dr. Ian Horrocks, Professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Oxford
KI - Künstliche Intelligenz, 30 (2) :201--203
2016
ISSN: 0933-1875
DOI:10.1007/s13218-016-0428-x
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2016/Glim2016a.pdf
57.
Zhou, Zhangquan; Qi, Guilin; Glimm, Birte
Exploring Parallel Tractability of Ontology Materialization
, Proceedings of the 22nd European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2016)Volume285fromFrontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, Page 73-81
Publisher: IOS Press
2016
DOI:10.3233/978-1-61499-672-9-73
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2016/ZhQG16a.pdf
56.
Glimm, Birte; Stuckenschmidt, Heiner
15 Years of Semantic Web: An Incomplete Survey
KI - Künstliche Intelligenz, 30 (2) :117--130
2016
ISSN: 0933-1875
DOI:10.1007/s13218-016-0424-1
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2016/GlSt2016a.pdf

2015

55.
Brenner, Markus; Glimm, Birte
Breaking the Black Box - Using Background Knowledge for Efficient Stream Reasoning
Proceedings of the International Symposium on Companion Technology (ISCT 2015)
September 2015
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2015/BrGl15a.pdf
54.
Parsia, Bijan; Matentzoglu, Nicolas; Goncalves, Rafael S.; Glimm, Birte; Steigmiller, Andreas
The OWL Reasoner Evaluation (ORE) 2015 Competition Report
In Thorsten Liebig and Achille Fokoue, Editor, Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Scalable Semantic Web Knowledge Base Systems co-located with 14th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2015)Volume1457fromCEUR Workshop Proceedings, Page 2-15
In Thorsten Liebig and Achille Fokoue, Editor
Publisher: CEUR-WS.org
2015
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2015/PMGG15a.pdf
53.
Glimm, Birte; Kazakov, Yevgeny; Kollia, Ilianna; Stamou, Giorgos
Lower and Upper Bounds for SPARQL Queries over OWL Ontologies
Proceedings of the 28th International Workshop on Description Logics (DL 2015)
Publisher: CEUR Workshop Proceedings
2015
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2015/GKKS15a.pdf
52.
Ulmschneider, Klaus; Michelberger, Bernd; Glimm, Birte; Mutschler, Bela; Reichert, Manfred
On Maintaining Semantic Networks: Challenges, Algorithms, Use Cases
International Journal of Web Information Systems, 11 (3) :291-326
2015
DOI:10.1108/IJWIS-04-2015-0014
51.
Steigmiller, Andreas; Glimm, Birte
Pay-As-You-Go Description Logic Reasoning by Coupling Tableau and Saturation Procedures
Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 54 :535--592
2015
DOI:10.1613/jair.4897
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2015/StGl15b.pdf
50.
Glimm, Birte; Kazakov, Yevgeny; Kollia, Ilianna; Stamou, Giorgos
Lower and Upper Bounds for SPARQL Queries over OWL Ontologies
Proceedings of the 29th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2015)
Publisher: AAAI Press
2015
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2015/GKKS15a.pdf
49.
Steigmiller, Andreas; Glimm, Birte; Liebig, Thorsten
Completion Graph Caching for Expressive Description Logics
Proceedings of the 28th International Workshop on Description Logics (DL 2015)
Publisher: CEUR Workshop Proceedings
2015
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2015/StGL15a.pdf
48.
Behnke, Gregor; Ponomaryov, Denis; Schiller, Marvin R. G.; Bercher, Pascal; Nothdurft, Florian; Glimm, Birte; Biundo, Susanne
Coherence Across Components in Cognitive Systems – One Ontology to Rule Them All
Proceedings of the 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2015), Page 1442-1449
IJCAI 2015
Buenos Aires
July 25th to July 31st
Publisher: AAAI Press
2015
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2015/BPSB15a.pdf
47.
Behnke, Gregor; Schiller, Marvin R. G.; Ponomaryov, Denis; Nothdurft, Florian; Bercher, Pascal; Minker, Wolfgang; Glimm, Birte; Biundo, Susanne
A Unified Knowledge Base for Companion-Systems - A Case Study in Mixed-Initiative Planning
Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Companion Technology (ISCT 2015), Page 43--48
First International Symposium on Companion Technology (ISCT 2015)
Ulm, Germany
23. - 25. September 2015
2015
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2015/Behnke15MIPDiscussion.pdf
46.
Behnke, Gregor; Bercher, Pascal; Biundo, Susanne; Glimm, Birte; Ponomaryov, Denis; Schiller, Marvin R. G.
Integrating Ontologies and Planning for Cognitive Systems
Proceedings of the 28th International Workshop on Description Logics (DL 2015)
Publisher: CEUR Workshop Proceedings
2015
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2015/BBBG15a.pdf

2014

45.
Glimm, Birte; Kazakov, Yevgeny; Liebig, Thorsten; Tran, Trung-Kien; Vialard, Vincent
Abstraction Refinement for Ontology Materialization
, Proceedings of the 27th International Workshop on Description Logics (DL 2014)Volume1193fromCEUR Workshop Proceedings, Page 180-195
Publisher: CEUR-WS.org
2014
File:pdfhttps://www.uni-ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.090/Publikationen/2014/GKLT14a.pdf